Keyboard Wall Art: Mavis Beacon Teaches Painting

Last week, we featured an sculpture of a horse that was made out of old keyboards. While it was truly impressive, there’s no chance you’ll be putting it in your house any time soon. Here’s some keyboard art you might actually hang on your wall.

Christopher Cobell of SketchkeysArtistry hunts down laptop keycaps in a variety of shades of grey to create these masterworks of pixel art. The largest of the current selection is his portrait of Marilyn Monroe shown above. Each one is handmade by gluing thousands of individual keys to a black foam backing, suitable for framing. Though I kind of like the idea of leaving the keys exposed so you can actually feel them.

The artist states that part of his process is to “check for any accidental expletives from the random placement of the keys.” Darn, I was hoping to make that a game for my houseguests – to find the hidden dirty words.

Prices for this awesome keyboard wall art range from $179 to $965 (USD), depending on the size and complexity of the image. If you look closely at the bomb image, you’ll see a Windows start key in the bottom right corner. I wonder if that’s intentional.